I’m looking for suggestions on how to safeguard myself in case their situations deteriorate quickly and I’m out one or both tenants, and ultimately rent money.

What safe guards do I need to put in place for buying outside California.  

Your only safeguard is the value of the property which is security for your investment.

This is not to say that an atttorney could not investigate and track down the owner, etc, but it would take many, many hours at $300-$400 per hour which will add up to thousands of dollars for the party wanting to find out the owner of a property held in a land trust.As far as getting "ratted out", their is a process/procedure to choosing your Trustee, and even if the trustee was looking to "screw you", there are many safeguards in place to prevent that.

That provides a basis for which they can have a safe guard against predatory GC's who might want to drive the price up and convince them they should be knitting and writing more checks because they are not a GC. 

Generally the real estate lic. commissions' first object in any and all cases is to protect the public and safeguard the interest of the consumer.

Savvy OPM will setup safeguards within their funding to insure the borrower success.

When we go around these safeguards then we essentially become what we hate about other nations.

Self-storage and mobile parks are the hot commodity now.What I look for in a park is one in a jurisdiction that favors or at least has some favorable safeguards in the statutes for the landlord.

When loaning money, the bank wants to safeguard itself as best as possible.